I do not see the misandry you suggest is here. Penny's response is remarkably compassionate to Aaronson. ["Hi there, shy, nerdy boys. Your suffering was and is real."] Marcotte's, while brutal and snarky, makes some insightful points. It is not misandry to be unkindly criticized for your ideas, even when you're being honest and confessional about a traumatic time in your life.

Like Aaronson and Penny, I was also a nerd who took refuge in nerdy pursuits as a way to deal with social and sexual awkwardness. I too grew up terrified that someone might find out I might be attracted to them. But this wasn't because I was afraid to be called a "creep" but because I was afraid they might become physically violent. This isn't an idle fear, since I've been gay bashed a few times, once that required hospitalization, each time contributed to my crippling PTSD.

Laurie Penny suffered nerd sexual anxiety like me and Aaronson did. But her fear was being called "crazy" and "slut". She says, "we were terrified, just like you, and ashamed, just like you, and waiting for someone to take pity on our lonely abject pubescence, hungry to be touched. But you did not see us there."

On top of nerd sexual anxiety, Penny had to deal with misogyny, while I had to deal with murderous homophobia. And yet Aaronson claims, without a hint of irony, "But I suspect the thought that being a nerdy [straight] male might not make me “privileged”—that it might even have put me into one of society’s least privileged classes..." LOL, Wut!? Hello Scott, we're right here. He doesn't see that we're dealing with the same shit PLUS an Imperial Fuckload that is SO extra. But unlike Aaronson, I do not blame my problems on feminism. I'm as shocked as Marcotte that this dude literally thinks he's at the bottom of society's totem pole because he has to figure out how to talk to women in a time of changing social mores.

Aaronson states that his nerdy anxiety was so severe that, "My recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man, or best of all, completely asexual..." This statement is mindblowing in it's failure of solidarity and imagination. He so fervently craves the empathy he denies to people like me and Penny. He acts like it's only straight male nerds who have ever feared rejection. WTHF!? It must have been nice ONLY to have feared being rejected or being called a creep and not say, rape, gay bashing, or racially-motivated violence. Aaronson suffered a common experience of fear of rejection, and since the objects of his affection were women, he twisted his anxiety into an indictment of feminism as a way to protect his privileged-as-fuck male ego. This would never have occurred to me to do, since the targets of my affection were men. I never had any problem figuring out what feminists meant by consent. It was the same as my own. I never had any trouble figuring out that Dworkin was a dismissable reactionary. I get the feeling that Aaronson read feminist writers with the intent of cherry picking whatever confirmed his fears.

It's hard to imagine anyone labeling Penny's piece as misandrist, so I assume you're referring to Marcotte. But while uncompromising and uncharitable, her critique of Aaronson's letter matches my own. She writes:

"There are many women out there who are also crippled by social anxieties who would prefer to hide in their hobbies and interests. The difference is a) they can’t blame the entire opposite sex instead of themselves for their mental health issues and b) when they actually try to turn those interests and hobbies into professions, they are told by various social forces, both explicitly and implicitly, that their femaleness means they will always be second-rate at best. Being able to hide in mathematics is, in fact, a privilege, because it is one that has long been and continues in many ways, denied to women."

Aaronson loudly decries the notion that he has male privilege, but both he and I were able to take refuge in our nerdiness, while women nerds are constantly getting tossed out of the tree fort. This notion that only dumb alpha males are sexist and that enlightened nerds are somehow sexism-free is absurd. It's like the straight geeks don't even realize we gay geeks have been in the same rooms. We see you. Yes, you're very often being creepy and sexist. Do you see us? We have had to negotiate the same fraught terrain as you have. We managed to do so without resort to blaming feminism for our suffering. Maybe learn from us?

If the extent of the misandry you've suffered is hearing that "men suck" from people who are unreasonable or deeply wounded or both, then that sounds remarkably tame to me. Perhaps my experience isn't typical, but problems for me are things like homelessness, poverty, trauma, queer bashing, and incipient fascism. I'm a man too. Hearing "men suck" doesn't even move the needle.

I was ready to accept that you've suffered misandry, but I'm absolutely not seeing it from what you've posted. What was your reaction to Penny's writing? Were you not impressed with her empathy and nerd solidarity?

You're right that when people say "men suck", that's not as bad as homelessness, poverty, trauma, gay-bashing, etc. But, compare: when people say "women suck" or "gay people suck", that's not as bad as homelessness, poverty, trauma, gay-bashing, etc. either! That doesn't make it OK to say "women suck" or "gay people suck". Hateful words like "men suck" and "women suck" and "gay people suck" are still bad even though they're not as bad as the problems you experienced.

Also, I don't think your experience is typical for someone in my generation (born in the 90s). Women and gay man in my generation certainly faces disadvantages, but nowhere near what you did on average.

And social awkwardness is a real disadvantage too. Historically, nerds were even the target of physical violence. You were unfortunate enough to be both gay and socially awkward, which must have been doubly difficult. But straight socially awkward people are still disadvantaged even though they're straight; just like gay people with normal social skills are still disadvantaged even though they have normal social skills.

The net effect is that even though I'm a straight man, I've still been significantly hurt, to the point of developing depression. I certainly haven't been hurt as badly as you were, but my pain is still real. (Imagine a gay man who never experiences gay-bashing, homelessness, or poverty. But suppose they're regularly exposed to homophobia, causing them to develop depression. They haven't been hurt as badly as you were, but their pain is still real!)

Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity: man, woman, straight, gay, nerdy or not. Your pain is worse than mine or Aaronson's, but that doesn't invalidate our pain, nor does it excuse the people who are causing our pain. It's not OK to use the existence of misogyny or homophobia as an excuse for misandry or nerdphobia.